The Last Card (9 page)

H
pulled the Merc into the carpark bordering his block of flats. As he turned the engine off H sighed with relief. He had been driving with one hand while the other pressed a pair of sweaty shorts to his throbbing, mutilated ear. Fuck, it hurt! But H put the pain to one side as he sat and thought. From the car he idly watched a group of removal men loading a nearby van with furniture.

Now what? H took a deep breath. He needed to find £15,000 in seven days! Impossible. But the meeting with Akers convinced him that he had to do the impossible because the alternative was
unimaginable
. H was not a man to allow himself to be pushed around but, Jesus Christ, Akers was a fucking psycho! There was a time to fight back and there was a time to know better. He racked his brains. He still had nearly five grand from his win at Blackie’s last night. Beverley probably had about two thousand saved in her account. That was seven. He only needed to find eight fucking grand in seven days! Neither of H’s parents were alive and, for a second, he thought about asking Beverley’s mother. The idea swiftly left his head.

Who the hell did he know that had eight grand, five grand or even two grand? The sad fact was, H didn’t know those kinds of people. In fact Beverley was probably the only person H knew with a bank account …

H remembered when he and Beverley had met at Compendium, a nightclub in Islington,. H and his man Blue had been chilling at one side of the club, near the bar, checking out the talent. It was a Friday night, they both had money in their pockets, were looking a bit tasty and were seeking fun for the weekend. They were foot-loose and
fancy-free and the club was bubbling with women; they were feeling good. Blue, a tall and bony mixed-race brother with a mountain of dreadlocks piled high on his head, nudged him in the ribs and said ‘Oiya!’ Three attractive women had entered their field of vision. The women, one of whom was white, had come from one of the other two dance floors in the club to jiggy to some R’n’B.

The three women all looked to be in their early twenties, dressed in their finest, and equally keen to have some fun. As they approached, H could see Blue coming alive. His sleepy eyes belied a keen sense of timing where women were concerned. Tracking the movement of the women across the dance floor, he spoke out of the side of his mouth.

‘Punany approaching; one o’clock … two o’clock … three o’clock.’

Picking up and then following Blue’s coordinates H was able to track their progress. The women found a spot they were happy with amongst other dancing bodies and began to dance.

‘What d’you reckon?’

‘Yeah, man, let’s cherps it.’ Blue was like a wolf, licking his lips with anticipation.

‘Which one d’you fancy?’

‘Which one don’t I fancy! Come on, man, you’re wasting time!’ Blue stepped forward, easing his way unhurriedly through the dancing bodies, homing in on the prey.

As Blue reached the women he began bobbing his shoulders and nodding his head in perfect time with the music. H came up quickly behind him, also falling effortlessly in with the beat.

Blue began casually chatting to the women. H joined in. They soon discovered that the three women were teachers at a secondary school in West London. They were at the club celebrating a birthday. As the night progressed it soon became clear that Blue was going to end the evening with the white woman. That left the birthday girl and Beverley for H. He had his eye on Beverley but it wasn’t clear until the very last slowie whom H would chose. He was sitting between the two women when’Allright’ came on. D’Angelo. Perfect. There was a pause in the conversation; both H and the women knew this was crunch time, a decision had to be made. H looked at Beverley, she looked at him. And with Saffron, the birthday girl watching, the two of them, without a word,
stepped out on to the dance floor. They had been together ever since.

As H sat in his Mercedes holding his damaged ear, he smile ddespite the pain, as he remembered some of the fun he and
Beverley
had had together. Especially in the early years. Things weren’t too clever at the moment, that was for damn sure, but it had to improve in the future. Didn’t it?

He finally climbed out of his car. Approaching this building he could see the activity with the removal men was still going on. Three of them were now manoeuvring an old, brown, threadbare sofa through the doors. Hang on a minute! H squinted as he looked at the threadbare sofa. That was his fucking sofa! He quickened his step, breaking into a jog. Jesus Christ, what was going on here? Still keeping one hand pressed to his ear and holding his kit bag with the other, H fairly ran towards the workmen now humping his sofa – his sofa! – into the back of the removal van.

By the time he arrived the sofa was almost in. H looked into the back of the van. Alongside his sofa was the wardrobe from his bedroom, the big chest of drawers, the bed, the television, two armchairs and the kitchen table.

‘Oi, mate, what are you doing?! What’s going on?!’

The workmen finished struggling with the sofa. One of them, standing up inside the van looked down at H with irritation.

‘What’s it look like we’re doing?’

H felt panic rising in his stomach as he rushed into the tower block.

Out of the lift, into the corridor, round the corner and there was his front door, wide open. H paused. He could hear someone
dragging
something heavy across the floor. H strode inside.

Beverley was busily dragging the washing machine out of the kitchen and into the living room. Cyrus was sitting on the floor happily playing with his Gameboy. They both looked up as H entered.
Beverley
wore a frantic, guilty look.

‘Daddy, Daddy, Mummy and I are going to live with Grandma!’ Cyrus innocently announced what Beverley had presumably been planning for some time. H felt a sickening jolt to his system.

‘You’re back.’ Beverley straightened up, facing him, stretching her back.

‘What’s going on?’

‘We’ve had enough, H, we can’t take it any more.’

‘’We’? What do you mean ‘we’?’ H bent down, gently took the Gameboy out of Cyrus’s hands and picked him up. Beverley stepped forward and roughly pulled the child to her. H didn’t want to fight over their son. He let the boy go.

‘Beverley!’

‘Don’t start, Hilary …’

‘What? When were you going to tell me?!’

‘I’ve tried to tell you but you won’t listen! I’m tired of your childish, stupid..!’

‘Listen,’ H interrupted her quickly, looking at Cyrus. ‘Can we do this somewhere …’ But Beverley went on.

‘… Stupid, arrogance. Your gambling, your staying out all night! Your wasting our money! Just throwing it away when we’re trying to move forward!’

H stood there and took it. She was glaring at him, challenging him to come back at her. She wanted this fight, probably to make what she was doing that much easier. But H could see the fear and upset welling in Cyrus’s eyes. A noise in the silence made him look round. The three removal men were standing behind him. One of them
delicately
cleared his throat.

‘Look, put Cyrus down and let’s go outside to talk this through.’ He reached over to take Cyrus from her arms but she jerked back as though he had something contagious.

‘No, Hilary! No, no, no, no, no!’ She was shouting at him.

‘You can’t just walk out!’

‘Oh, yes I can! You just watch me!’ She tried to push past him, heading for the front door. H blocked her path.

‘Beverley …’ She tried to step round him but he again stepped in her path.

‘Don’t do it, Hilary.’

‘But, Bev ….’ She now set Cyrus down on the floor, aimed him at the door and patted his behind.

‘We’re going! Go on, Cyrus, you go down with the nice man and Mummy will be down in a minute.’ Her eyes told one of the workmen to go down in the lift with Cyrus, but Cyrus wanted none of this. He turned back to his father.

‘But, daddy, I want …’

Beverley sharply interrupted. ‘Go on! I’ll be down in a minute?’

H moved towards her. ‘Please, Bev.’

‘It’s too late.’

‘Let’s just talk it …’

‘I tried that this morning.’

‘Let’s try again …’

‘No! You’ve got to grow up sometime, H. Be a man. That’s all we want. Just face up to your responsibilities.’

She pushed past H, grabbed Cyrus’s arm, swept past the removal men and was gone. The front door slammed behind them.

H stood, his back to the front door. It was done. They’d gone. H pushed himself off the door and walked in a daze into the living room. It was now a sad, grey, dusty mess: a stack of Jamaican reggae albums were pushed against a wall, a few old boxing magazines and newspapers lay scattered about the floor, some clothes – including H’s lucky suit – were piled in a corner. In the middle of the room, sitting on a high stool, was a glass bowl with a small goldfish in it. At that moment, this small fish felt like H’s only friend. H looked around, slowly surveying the wreckage of his life.

Later he stood in the shower, jets of hot water shooting down at him, bursting over his body, running down the contours of his skin. Over his deep chest, down what remained of his abdominal muscles, through the stiff wire of his pubic hair, down the big, strong, rounded quadriceps and on to his feet. He watched as the water ran from his body and drained away. It was scalding hot. H wanted to cleanse himself of the day.

Beverley was right. She had tried to talk to him. Time and time and time again. But he had put her off. He’d silenced her. He’d ignored her. He’d argued with her and shut her down. He’d accused her of nagging him. Nag, nag, nag, that’s all she ever did these days. At least that’s what he’d told her. He had not wanted to face what he knew to be true. That he had become addicted to gambling, to a scene that he knew was destroying him, that was eating his time, his energy, his money. Why couldn’t he stop? Because he fucking liked it, stupid! It was a buzz! A crack! It was exciting! He was good at this! And he made money! Sometimes. Hadn’t he just had a huge win?

He turned off the water but continued to stand there, dripping in the bath. He had just had a huge win but so what? Now what? What did the money mean to him? So he had a bit of extra scratch in his
pocket, so what? He’d only lose it again the next time he played. Did that matter? Isn’t that what life was about? The ebb and flow of money? Here today, gone tomorrow? What he was doing was buying some fun. He knew that, he wasn’t stupid. So what was the problem? He stepped out of the bath and looked for the towel to dry himself off. Beverley’d taken all the towels. Dripping, he stepped out of the bathroom and looked in the closet in the hallway. She’d left him one. He dried himself with that and went into the living room.

What was the problem? The problem was that the money that came and went left nothing, or not very much for Beverley and Cyrus. He supposed. Much of the money he gambled was the money that Beverley spent her days earning. He supposed. Maybe that was it. He looked around the flat. He had cleaned up and put things away but it still wasn’t much. All that was left in the way of furniture was his stereo, a stool and his goldfish. Not much to show for thirty-two years of life on the planet. It suddenly hit H that everything Beverley had taken had been hers. Beverley had paid for it. What had he paid for? The stereo. A Nakamichi. And the goldfish.

With his towel wrapped around his waist he padded over the thin, cheap carpet and put on his favourite CD – Junior Murvin’s ‘Police and Thieves’. An old skool classic. The world might be a cruel and harsh place but some things make it more bearable and this was one of them. He put the track on repeat and cranked up the volume. Once was never enough for Junior Murvin.

He walked into the kitchen, found a little pot of fish food, then returned to the living room. He tipped some of the food into the bowl that was still on the stool which he had placed by the window. H watched the fish rise up and nibble the food floating on the water’s surface.

The flat was on the eighth floor and from the window he could see much of South London spread out before him. Darkness had crept over the capital while he had been in the shower and as he looked out, lights were winking on and off. The city looked unbelievably
beautiful
; romantic, alive, pregnant with possibility.

Sitting on the stool, leant against the gold fish bowl, was a postcard. It was from H’s older brother, Sean, who was now living in the Caribbean, in Montserrat. He lived in a big house which had belonged to their mother, in Virgin Isles, an area on the North-western part of
the island. According to Sean money was hard to find but life was good. He’d moved there with his wife, and two children, Jamie and Isaac, ten and eight years old, and was always writing to H asking him to come out. H knew that a part of Sean missed South London, where the two of them had grown up, but H could also tell that Sean was happy: it was as if he’d found himself. Montserrat gave Sean something that London couldn’t.

He looked at the card. It was the classic image of the Caribbean; a sunset, a beautiful woman in silhouette. She was leaning against a tree and behind her lay a golden beach and the sparkling ocean, stretching out to the horizon. Written across the card was the motto ‘Grab the opportunity – Montserrat is for you’. H thought about that. Why didn’t he just clear out and forget about the psycho Akers? No, he couldn’t leave Cyrus and Beverley just like that.

H sat cross-legged in the middle of the empty room looking at the wall. His baby’s mother had just dumped him, taken his son with her and stripped the flat bare. He owed Alan Akers £15,000 and he had seven days to pay him. Apart from that everything was fine. H gave an involuntary shudder.

He looked around for something to distract himself, saw the stack of newspapers that he had tidied up earlier and dragged them over. The first thing he saw on turning a tabloid over to look at the sports page was the headline ‘Mancini Jumps For Joy’. Underneath was a picture of Mancini in the ring with his arms held up in victory.

H tossed the papers aside, re-crossed his legs, straightened his back and closed his eyes. He stayed like this for a while, breathing deeply and Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves played on.